Italian football ain't what it used to be. 20 years ago, the Serie A was the strongest football league of the planet. Stars from England, Germany, Spain or even Brasil went on to compete with the best Italian players at the time. The clubs were swimming in money and the football was considered to be world class...by Italian standards
. But things would change for the worse. In financial terms, the ever-growing Premier League would soon snatch up the best players of Europe, leaving the Serie A with less and less star players. Other leagues such as the Primera Division or even the Ligue 1 would follow suit. On a sporting side, the Serie A even fell back behind the resurgent German Bundesliga, who long thought to be the "ill man of Europe". But with a strong wave of promising youth players, as well as reasonable management, the Bundesliga managed to close the gap to the Premier League and the Primera Division. Furthermore, continuing cases of hooliganism put a bad light on Italian football. The restrictions put upon the Italian football fans caused attendance to decline further. Some team owners had enough of this. They devised plans for a new "Italian Super League", which would only consist of ten of the best Italian football teams. It would also become a closed shop, thus removing any possibility for relegation or promotion. The remaining half of the Serie A would then form a feeder league, where Italy's talents would gather some experience in professional football. But as it turned out, the Italian football association also had an interest in reforming the Serie A. Therfore, Italy's football landscape shaped up like this:
Serie A
The Serie A consists of ten of Italy's best teams. They will compete for the "scudetto", as well as for the qualification for the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League.
Serie B
The Serie A clubs that didn't make it into the "new" Serie A will form the new Serie B. All teams will also become some sort of farm teams for the Serie A, as young talents are expected to gain their first experience in professional football here.
The rest
The rest of the teams will keep going as usual, only that they are now playing for the "Italian Amateur Football Championship".
But for now, we're only focussing on the Serie A.
Da Rules
- In order to compete in the new Serie A, each teams had to gather 100m€ as start-up capital. These 100m € have to be used for transfers and wages.
- Teams can sign whoever they want, as long as they are willing to join the Italian Football Players Union (Only applies for foreign players). Keep that in mind, as a slight percentage of the transfer fee will go to the IFPU, as well as "solidary payments" to the lower leagues.
- But we won't start with a clean sheet of paper, as we'll use the real life squads of the 13/14 season.
- There will be 18 legs played over the season. This has been done to give teams more time to regenerate and to give teams running in European competitions some sort of relief.
- Match length will be 10 minutes and I'll broadcast all of them live via UStream.
I will simulate the Serie A with Sensible World of Soccer 96-97, only that I have the data from 13-14. Now on to the teams:
2013-14 Serie A
- Juventus (FantometteBR)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Napoli (roblomas52)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Milan (pykcu)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Fiorentina (Takagi_for_the_win)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Udinese (Ataxia)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Roma (FMecha)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Lazio (Hermann95)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Catania*
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Inter (Stramala)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
- Parma (The Dutch Bear)
Budget: 100.000.000 €
* I know Catania sticks out of the teams a bit. So if you want to play as any other Serie A team, just say so and I'll replace Catania. Hopefully this football league will be a success
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